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A question about this Vista speed-boost USB/SD memory card thing...

post #1 of 4
2/23/07 at 10:44am
Thread Starter 
As I understand it only from bits and pieces, Vista users can enjoy a performance boost similar to adding RAM by installing either a USB memory stick or an SD (or other) card.
Do I have this right?

Can this idea be retro-created for XP?
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post #2 of 4
2/23/07 at 4:02pm
Yes you have it right. Some usb sticks and sd cards are not compatible with ReadyBoost.
What is does is loads the programs you use most into a ram drive created on the removeable media. It will speeds thing up. It won't be the same as upgrading the ram.
It doesn't work with XP, but, there are other ways to set up a ram drive for XP. Although they don't give any where near the performance gain as ReadyBoost.
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post #3 of 4
2/24/07 at 11:55pm
Hey PK.

You have the general idea of it, but saying its similar to adding RAM could be a bit confusing. Check the WIKI for a great detailed description of what its all about. For the most part, its just a turbo disk cacheing function for the OS. I guess you could think of it as a disconnected HDD cache (sort of like the 8 or 16 megs you would have installed IN the drive) The major difference is that the OS has control over what happens within the cache, which means Vista can organize this cache space for the specific programs you use the most (in sort of a superfetch fashion) Actually its like a hybrid between the above mentioned HDD cache RAM and your systems swap file. Considering flash memory has an incredibly fast random access time compared to your hard disk, random reads and writes get a major boost from this cache space. Of course your hard drive can read sequential data MUCH faster than any flash media, so anything that can be read in sequence remains on the hard disk and out of the cache. Everything just works together in a wonderful way, and from my own personal experience, can vouch for its usefulness.

Now... I think using standard logic, that this could be retrofitted to function under XP BUT it would in no way be as efficient there, due to Vista having the core OS designed to take advantage of this feature and XP does not. Technically speaking, something like this could be ultimately compiled into a Linux setup and work as well as (if not better than) Vista. Of course this is because with Linux you can recompile the core kernal to accept this technology in an embedded form, where XP would have to run it as an external service. Of course I am not saying that it couldn't happen in XP, I just don't see it being as beneficial even if it were implemented.

Does that cover all the bases?
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post #4 of 4
2/25/07 at 12:29am
Thread Starter 
Errr, -Yeah. I think that about covers it!
I actually did some web research to better understand it, but nowhere could I find the explaination of why it couldn't be implimented in XP efficiently.
Thanks!
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